The Indian car-park has been the home of an illegal market for the past 40 years and includes paper shops and warehouses storing chemicals. Police said the fire may have been sparked by an electrical short-circuit.

The death toll is expected to rise higher and has already provoked calls for an inquiry into the third major fire incident in the city in the last three years. Just over a year ago, in December 2011, more than 90 people were killed when a fire broke out in a hospital. Many of those who died included patients too sick to escape the flames. In March 2010 more than 40 people were killed in a fire in a smart shopping street in the city centre, some of whom jumped to their deaths after finding a fire escape locked.

Police said 18 of the dead were men and were among 38 people, mainly market porters, who had been sleeping on the car park’s floor when the fire broke out. The area was filled with black, poisonous smoke from plastics and foam warehouses in the building.

"We found dozens of people lying unconscious with severe burn injuries on the floors of shops and some died of suffocation in their sleep, Gopal Bhattacharya", West Bengal’s fire services director, told the news agency AFP. The fire had been brought under control, he added.

West Bengal’s chief minister Mamata Bannerjee blamed the state’s former Communist rulers for failing to force property owners to acquire government licenses and pledged to ensure full compliance and inspections, but made similar promises after the 2011 fire. The families of the dead would receive around £2,500 in compensation, she said, while urging market workers not to light fires near inflammable materials.